G.K. Chesterton Quotes

The only way to be sure of catching a train is to miss the one before it.

Stick to the man who looks out of the window and tries to understand the world. Keep clear of the man who looks in at the window and tries to understand you.

The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

A society is in decay, final or transitional, when common sense really becomes uncommon.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.

It is always the secure who are humble.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

To be simple is the best thing in the world.

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.

The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. Never forget that the devil fell by force of gravity. He who has the faith has the fun.

Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

I need not pause to explain that crime is not a disease. It is criminology that is a disease.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

Unless a man becomes the enemy of an evil, he will not even become its slave but rather its champion.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.

Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing.